The phoenix Cardinals

Both the Redbirds and Rick Ankiel have risen from the ashes to make the NL Central a lot more interesting, writes Phil Rogers

August 17, 2007|By Phil Rogers

Can you win a division title without respectable starting pitching?

Not usually, but anything's possible in the National League Central.

Just look at Rick Ankiel.

Could winning without pitching be any harder than taking a pitcher good enough to start playoff games at age 20 and turning him into a hitter with enough power to crush three home runs in his first 12 at-bats upon his return to the big leagues?

FOR THE RECORD - Additional material published Aug. 21, 2007:CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONSSt. Louis Cardinal Rick Ankiel decided to switch from pitcher to outfielder after consulting with Cardinals general manager Walt Jocketty on what the process would entail.

The remarkably resilient Ankiel has done that after spending the last three years working the way back up the minor-league ladder as an outfielder. He missed a little while he was away, including the World Series in two different Busch Stadiums, but he has come back at a wild time.

Ignore the 58-60 record that the St. Louis Cardinals bring to Chicago for a four-game weekend series. In the words of reliever Russ Springer, "We're in it."

So it would seem.

Having just swept the Brewers in Milwaukee, with Adam Wainwright throwing seven shutout innings in Thursday's 8-0 win, the Cardinals have climbed within 2 1/2 games of the first-place Brewers. This was the 11th straight game in which a St. Louis starter worked at least six innings. Those are the numbers Tony La Russa and his players are focusing on, not the 5.10 earned-run average by the Chris Carpenter-less starting rotation, which through Wednesday ranked as the league's worst.

That's right. The Cards' starters are allowing more than five earned runs for every nine innings of work, and the Brewers and Cubs have allowed them to climb back into the NL Central race.

The Brewers have gone 47 days without a win from one of their top three starters - the disabled Ben Sheets, plus Jeff Suppan and Chris Capuano. That group is winless in 19 starts since Sheets won on June 30, a victory that raised Milwaukee's record to 47-33 and its lead to 7 1/2 games over the Cubs and 10 1/2 over the Cardinals.

It's fair to say that seems like a long time ago for the Brew Crew.

The Cubs' 12-4 win on Thursday raised their record to 5-10 in August and 3-7 since Alfonso Soriano tore his right quadriceps trying to get to third base.

The Cardinals haven't been at .500 since April 16 and lost five in a row as recently as Aug. 1-5, when they were beaten up by lowly Pittsburgh and Washington.

The pitching staff that won the 2006 World Series has disintegrated. Carpenter was lost to Tommy John surgery; Suppan, Jeff Weaver and Jason Marquis left as free agents and reliever Josh Hancock was killed in a car wreck. But the Cards have gotten hot at the right time, winning eight of their last 10 games, including the last five in a row.

It was easy to write off St. Louis before the series in Milwaukee. There just didn't seem to be enough pitching on hand, especially starting pitching. But research shows the Cardinals are not trying to do anything unprecedented.

Their pitching staff ranked 12th in the NL with a 4.70 ERA. It's not impossible to go to the playoffs with that pitching, even in the weaker hitting league.

Since the advent of division play in 1969, 10 of the 100 NL teams that have qualified for the postseason ranked in the bottom half of the league in staff ERA. Two of those 10, the 1995 Rockies and the 1981 Phillies, finished at the very bottom of the league in ERA.

What would make this an unprecedented run by the Cardinals is if they made the playoffs with both their staff ERA and runs scored total in the bottom half of the league.

Five of those 10 playoff teams with second-division pitching led the NL in scoring, and nine of them were among the top four. The 2006 Cardinals were ninth in ERA and sixth in scoring. These '07 Cards were 10th in scoring (and 12th in ERA) through Wednesday.

You're not supposed to be able to win like this, but maybe you can in this division. Ankiel has certainly given St. Louis a lift.

He's the seventh guy La Russa has started in right field this season, getting his chance because La Russa soured on Juan Encarnacion about the time Scott Spiezio entered a treatment program for substance abuse. His instant success (8-for-27 with three homers and six RBIs) is no fluke.

Ankiel was leading the Pacific Coast League with 32 homers in 102 games when he was promoted last Friday, and would have been up a long time ago except the Cardinals knew they'd lose him if they ever tried to send him back to the Memphis Redbirds.

"I don't think he gets enough credit," Dodgers pitcher Derek Lowe said after giving up a homer to Ankiel. "You just can't call this kid up as a feel-good story. I am amazed at what he has been able to do. It's a phenomenal story."

Ankiel's departure from the big leagues was as sad a story as his return has been a great one.

A second-round pick in the 1997 draft, he tore up the minors, reaching the mound in St. Louis late in the '99 season, a month after turning 20. He was a regular in the rotation for a powerful Cardinals team in 2000, winning 11 games and finishing in the top 10 in ERA. But he unraveled in the playoffs, totally losing the ability to throw strikes.